Thursday, October 29, 2009

@Diagram, Kim Parko contributes a review of Ever b/w Shane Jones's Light Boxes, including mini-interviews with both of us, and lots of wild thought: These books are creation stories, funeral dirges, and the mystifying yawn between. Thanks Kim!

I am reading Michael Ondaatje's Divisadero right now on a whim, and man so far it is gorgeous. Huge. Hope it continues in such way. Seems like it will.

Halloween. Everybody getting boners or throwing up some. I wish I was 12 again. I wonder how my life would be different if that year I was 12 I hadn't stopped my friend and I from walking down the hill in the neighborhood down from my house, where in the light off of the tall lamp a van had parked and as we crossed some grass these two men came walking as if to cut us off, no one else anywhere around. I stopped and said we'd missed a house behind us and my friend said no we hadn't and I said yes we did I'm going back and the men were getting closer and my friend didn't get it and I grabbed his arm and we started up the hill again and the men walked faster and we ran. That night a few other kids were abducted in our area by men inside a van.

I am doing a photo shoot tomorrow for a profile in a big UK based magazine, I think I'm supposed to destroy something in the process, if I want to. I think we're going to a ghetto strip mall and an abandoned bunch of tiny buildings.

New proof of Kristina's book looks amazing and beautiful, should have them hopefully by end of next week, which is later than I'd hoped but they will be just right and magic. If you'd like to review the book or interview Kristina please drop me a line. She's funny.

* Fences by Ben Brooks (new from Fugue State Press, felt good and fresh)

* The Fatalist by Lyn Hejinian (old from Omnidawn, stole a quote from this for my insomnia ms)

* rereading several essays in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace (I think I might have an argument with the TV essay now, as well as it is written. the end section of Tornado Alley essay blows my mind every time)

* first half of Killing Kanoko by Hiromi Ito (forthcoming from Action Books, is amazing, she writes a lot about feces and bodies and babies and jacking off, will post more on her when I am done reading)

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

The new Flaming Lips sounds like Oneida. I'm not sure yet if this is a good thing, but it seems better for them somehow.

The new Themselves has me excited, downloading now. I think I am irretrievably stuck listening to rap for the rest of my life, except in small spurts of other, as it is the only music that still innovates, while still repeating itself. In this way it is like Gordon Lish.

I am going to be lecturing on Three 6 Mafia and Gordon Lish and why Chekhov is bad advice at the New College of Florida next month.

Reread the proof of Kristina's book last night: it is fucking amazing. There is no other book that reads like this book. I can't wait to get it into people's hands. We're aiming at Halloween, but may be a couple days late due to fucking with the printers. The cover is bright red and came in burgundy. Proofs are smart.

If you are in Atlanta, Heather Christle and Chris Deweese are reading at Beep Beep on Thursday at 700. You should come. They are both hilarious and amazing. Heather's book just came out from Octopus. I am going to buy it from her there.

After &now I have decided to spend all of October and November focusing only on perfecting the novel, which is due in December or something. Editing is kind of fun and kind of gritty. Feels like the book is coming even more alive. Feels like there are still mirrors hidden in it that I have to turn around and face the other way in the paper.

Book inside a book.

I kind of want to call the novel Ever also. Can I do that? Can I just keep writing Ever for the rest of my life, over and over again?

This download needs to hurry up.

I tricked Apple into replacing the battery on my laptop after 380 cycles, 15 months later. I didn't know their coverage of the battery supposedly stops after 300 cycles. If your battery has changed at all in quality and you have Apple Care and you are nearing 300 cycles you should call and make them replace it.

There is a big difference between nice and kind. I like to think I'm kind.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Jereme Dean again benevolently bought a bunch more copies of Scorch Atlas to give away. For one, just comment on this thread with anything and I will put you into a drawing for it, done on Tuesday.

I killed all of my links mostly, cuz linking 50 people seems insane, and not linking 200 other people seems insane. I've had complex linking guilt for a long while now and so just decided to erase it. I will link things now from the postbody, as they are better there. What is linking.

@Holy Land, Rauan Klassnik talks about his experience so far 45 pages into Scorch Atlas: "like biting into a burning apple. A sizzling cherry. Each taste's a piece of fire that whirrs on the tongue and surrounds the brain in a live-dead sack of cold-burning aura. This book's going on my night stand next to Finnegan's Wake..."

Should I call my novel Beehiveded. No. I want to just call it Exit. I like the long title but maybe should just make it brutally short. Should it be called O0o0oo000oo, or another unspeakable chain. I don't know. No. I'm way behind on everything.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

The benevolent J.A. Tyler reviewed Scorch Atlas for Tarpaulin Sky: Scorch Atlas is a world of mold, a world of festering wounds, a world of hurt. Scorch Atlas is a carefully and meticulously distraught world of language, a trembled and shaken line of thought, a vibrant dead trance of phrasing, the measure of words put together all and in the right ways. Blake Butler has made something enormous here, in the reams of his Scorch Atlas, and if nothing else, we are simply destroyed by it, mistaking our skin for its cover, our blood for its damage, our eyes for its violent and broken images.

Kind thanks to JA.

K. Born's book is on it's way to the printers, expect preorders to ship by Halloween. Boom!

Leaving tomorrow for Chicago book release party at No Coast at 7 PM, then Quickies on Tuesday night, 730 @ Innertown Pub. Then Wednesday through Saturday evening in Buffalo at &Now, including a panel for the 30 Under 30 Anthology on Thursday at 1130.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Unsaid has a new website, with a lot of issue 4 all available online. People aren't full of shit when they say this might be the greatest issue of literary magazine of all time. I still haven't stopped reading its 500 pages, a bit every other day or so.

I have 3 pieces in the issue, one of which was part of EVER. This piece is a section from something much larger. The emdashes are fucked up online, but yeah.

A rather long and in-person interview I did with the rad Ben Spivey is up at Writers Bloc.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Year of the Liquidator, the press Shane Jones and I started earlier this year, will release its first title, Kristina Born's One Hour of Television, on Halloween.

Designed to run as a series, the books, as we hopefully put out more, will form a continuum of design and style, like a little freakhouse on your nightstand.

People have already said nice things:

To read One Hour of Television is to flip channels between a 50’s science film on the joys of nuclear prowess and a heist-driven road movie set in a late-imperialist apocalypse. In Born’s hands, all social code is a recipe for deadpan horror. Strained domestic tableaus are intimately wedded to carpet bombings and crowd control, and our best chances at intimacy arrive via gruesome medical emergencies. This book is in revolt against language as an anesthesia machine. It's in revolt against an empire in which any vote you cast necessarily ends up as a vote for genocide. - Lara Glenum, author of Maximum Gaga

One Hour of Television's recurring headwounds make an apt symbol for the work as a whole; urgent and insistent, the oozing gauze on an otherwise lovely skull. Would that all flash fiction be this deadly. - Amelia Gray, author of AM/PM

Sunday, October 4, 2009

New contest special issue of Lamination Colony is now live, with the contest winner Bobby Alter, as well as 9 finalists: Mark Doten, James Chapman, Mel Bosworth, Christian Tebordo, Darby Larson, Sasha Fletcher, Drew Kalbach, Andrew Borgstrom, Ben Segal. Feel really excited by all of the work in this issue, like it demonstrates a coming explosion. I like to stare.

Chicago folks, there will be a release party for Scorch Atlas on Monday October 12 @ 7 PM at No Coast, readings, bands, stuff. Trying to rummage up a baby to take a bite of.

Also going to the &Now Conference from Wednesday to Saturday, a panel on Thursday at noon for the 30 Under 30 Anthology, with tons of good readers. Come hang out. Free with attendance is a copy of the &Now Anthology of Innovative Writing, what they are calling the anti-Pushcart, which I have a piece in, and Giancarlo Ditrapano's piece from the first No Colony also is in.

Speaking of No Colony, we have just reopened for submissions, looking only for long works, from at least 8000 words up to whatever. The issue will probably 3 or 4 very long pieces only. Don't send short, we'll have to delete it. We don't wanna do that.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

We are thinking about printing up a limited run of hard copies of the Scrotal Cash remix of Scorch Atlas. They would be rather expensive since they'd be in very short run, probably like $20-$22 apiece, at like 180 pages, but would look really nice and I think the work is powerful enough that it warrants book object? If you would be willing to buy a copy at this price, please comment? I will throw in some extra junk like a soundtrack and some other goodies to help increase value. I would really like as many people as possible to read the incredible work of remixed here (still available for free.

Contributors would obviously need to give their seal of approval on this, which is pending, and we couldn't afford to buy everyone one out of pocket, but if there is sufficient interest and everyone is cool with it, it will go down, and be a cool limited edition object of sorts. Holla?